Travel Diary - Day Four

Day Four

OK, not sure if I want to own up to this one, but here goes. I arrived at the airport in time, although I was getting worried that I would be late and that wasn’t a good feeling! Made my way up to the counter, handed over my passport and ticket information to find out that I was a day early – I really did have a whole extra day. AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!

To back up a little, one of the buttons on my watch isn’t working so I couldn’t change the time to Argentina time. So I bought a cheap, $20 watch so I could have proper time – especially important given the last couple of days. What I didn’t realise was that I managed to accidentally set the date wrong – I mean what digital watch these days expects you to set the day and the date separately?? Whatever, my bad. That meant that when I looked at my new watch the date was a day ahead. I didn’t check my laptop because I hadn’t got around to changing the time and date – figured I would leave that ‘til I got to Guyana. The guy who checked my ticket so he could ring the taxi didn’t notice, not that I blame him, it was my fault all the way.

Sooo…an early morning trip to the airport and then another back again, for the grand total of $78. What a waste of time and money! So I’m sitting here writing this up waiting for another taxi. I’m kind of pleased I’m leaving tonight – there is something of a party going on in the room next door and I’m not sad to be missing trying to sleep through it.

Otherwise it has been an OK day. I slept until 10. Had a shower and breakfast and then headed into town for a bit more sightseeing. Decided that the weather would be OK so didn’t take my $6 umbrella or my hat – bad call, but we’re over it. Took the train to a station I hadn’t tried before and found myself next to Plaza de Mayo – named for the date of Argentina’s independence from Spain. (On the topic of independence and other war related thoughts you might like to look at what I have posted on my blog. It’s a work in progress but some stuff worth thinking about.) On arriving I could hear a band playing and thinking that sounded interesting I wandered in the general direction to find large numbers of riot police and barriers arrayed around the Plaza, and I was in between. Fortunately, no-one else seemed in the slightest bit concerned and I just followed people who were clearly about their business and wound my way out as quickly as I could without running. Acutally the band was quite good and as I did a rotation of the block so I could look from a distance a large demonstration marched into the Plaza. Well it looked large to me, maybe a few thousand people. They were all waving flags but seemed pretty relaxed from where I could see.

I walked around and into the big Cathedral that sits on the square. I could watch from there while having a ready avenue of retreat. It got uninteresting pretty quickly so I spent some time wandering around the Cathedral. Some beautiful art and a really great ‘Stations of the Cross’. Nice to be in a peaceful space like that. After that I wandered around some of the side streets before making my way to the other side of the Plaza. On the way I crossed the road behind the demonstration as it wended its way off into the distance. The place looked like it had snowed from all the paper on the ground – turned out, at least from my non-existent Spanish, that it was an election campaign. Makes our elections look rather tame!

I managed to find my way from there to the Russian Orthodox Cathedral and had a wander through that. Remarkable how similar to the Roman Catholic and yet how different. It would be good, with plenty of time to go through the two a few more times and ponder the similarities and differences. If only I had all the time in the world J. Just across the road was a restaurant where I could use my Visa card – useful because after last night’s escapade I was nearly out of pesos. Waved my finger at the menu without having any idea what it would bring to find I had ordered this amazing chicken and bacon and vegetable dish that was exquisitely cooked and came with a drink as well. All for 25 pesos – just under $10. NICE!

By then it had started to rain so I found my way up to a subway station, another one I hadn’t visited and came back to the hotel. Got here in time to ring Ruth and the kids before they went to work/school. Missed Tim – he needs to get out of bed earlier!!J!! Then went down to pay for the phone call and nearly had a heart attack at paying $75 for 16 minutes. Last time I’ll call anyone from a hotel! But I remember Dad telling me a long time ago that whatever it costs, you ring. So I did. And I think it was worth every penny – Tim you had better be up next time!!!

So I slept for a while, wrote for a while, read for a while, watched a movie on TV, went out to get some pizza, or something like it, not sure what you would really call it, booked my taxi and here I am. Much less stressed than last night, that’s for sure. In the end a pretty good day. Hmmm, that’s an improvement from what I wrote earlier. That’s good.